All I Want For Christmas Is You
by ohyellowbird
Summary: It's Christmastime in Murder House and Violet's missing everyone's favorite ghost.


A/N: Okay, so I can't write twisted smut all the time, can I? Here's a little holiday fic for you guys. Set after Piggy Piggy. Violet is alive. Tate is dead.

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><p>Violet hadn't seen Tate in almost a month. When he'd come to her that day, with wet eyes and soft words, gifting her his dead and rotten heart from the bottom of her bed, she'd told him to leave her alone, and just like he'd promised, he had.<p>

It was too much too soon. She just couldn't compute it all. Why'd he have to save her life when she was just getting used to the idea that he wanted only to take them?

Whatever. There was no point in thinking about it. It was Christmas, and he was gone, and she was alone.

Vivian was staying with her sister and Ben was never home anymore, probably out fucking Hayden or those sluts from her high school that helped Leah force feed her a dying cigarette.

She's in her room listening to Bright Eyes and dressed down in an over-sized sweater that reminds her too much of he-who-must-not-be-named.

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><p><em>And I never thought this life was possible<em>

_You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for_

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><p>"Goddamnit, Tate," she huffs out into the empty room, kicking over her end table, sending the book about birds that she never bothered to return tumbling to the floor along with her docked iPod.<p>

He's everywhere even when he's not, haunting her in everything she does. He's ruined Nirvana for her, books, sweaters, blonde hair, dark eyes, wide smiles, and pink mouths. Everything. She sees him at the foot of her bed or cross-legged on her floor, flipping through the books on her shelf. Her entire room reeks of him.

So she leaves, slides off her mattress and pads out the door, ignoring the toppled table and scattered shit. Maybe there's something on Netflix or Moira's around to make her a snack.

There's a commotion coming from downstairs, the scuff of chairs on wood and muffled voices.

"Mom? Dad?" she calls from the hallway, suddenly aware of each creak and sigh the old house breathes.

There's no answer.

Weird.

She's a little startled, but the prospect of returning to her room to mourn Tate is so unappealing she takes a slow breath and continues on, deciding it must be Moira cleaning up the kitchen before she clocks out for the evening.

It's not Moira. It's not her parents. It's not even Tate.

There's no one there, but someone had been.

It's like someone waved a wand and turned the entire downstairs into a winter wonderland.

The banister leading into the foyer is wrapped in fresh garland and there's a wreath pinned to the door.

"What the fuck…" she exhales, running her fingers over the bristled decorations before turning into the sitting room.

Right there, smack dab in the middle of the room, is a tree you'd only ever see in an expensive catalog or at the mall. It's gotta be almost twenty feet high and weigh at least a ton. It's been wrapped in tinsel and lights and even a string of popcorn. Every branch has been tipped with an ornament, silver or glass, hand painted like something out of a fairy tale.

Upon closer inspection, Violet realizes with some irritation that none of the ornaments are familiar to her, nothing she's made in school or they've bought as a family before they were too broken to care about sentimental shit like that.

Was there going to be another open house? Did those dysfunctional gays do all this while she was upstairs taking a bath or reading? The dark-haired one, _Chad, _seemed a likely culprit.

After exploring the rest of the lower floor, taking in the roaring fire and the cinnamon-scented pinecones that had been bowled on every table space available and the collection of Snowmen figurines atop the hearth and the hundred other holiday festivities, she wanders into the kitchen, suddenly hungry for candy canes and hot chocolate.

But upon opening the fridge Violet realizes that the milk went bad three weeks ago and she might not be afraid of anything, but she'd rather gulp down thirty more pills than a glass of lumpy mold.

With a aggravated sigh she throws shut the door and fills up a sauce pan with tap water; they've got a box of Ovaltine lying around somewhere.

At some point during her hunt for marshmallows, Christmas music pours into the room, a soft, dreamy version of 'All I Want For Christmas Is You.'

When she notices, she has a sudden fuming urge to tear open the bag of old marshmallows and hurl them across the room.

Fucking Tate.

How can you miss someone and want to bash their skull in at the same time?

She wants to hunt for whatever stereo is blasting holiday cheer at her and flip it off, but the surface of her pot is rolling and she has to rush over and draw it away from the burner.

"Oh, fuck. Fuck!" she hisses, because the boiling water's spilling over onto her fingers and into the sink and she's barely able to upright it before it all swirls down the drain.

Sucking the middle knuckles of her fingers into her mouth and pushing her tongue against the slick burns, she turns back to the kitchen island for a spoonful of Ovaltine only to find a mug already sitting at the edge of the counter, red and green and dotted with flying reindeer.

Her eyes bounce between each entrance of the kitchen, but she can't really remember whether she put it out herself or not, so she wills down the speed of her pulse and begins dumping clump after clump of powdered imitation chocolate into the mug.

When she's poured in the water and stirred it with a brittle candy cane from a few years back and there's ripped up marshmallows floating in the murky brown liquid, the song's changed and she finds herself humming along to the new tune, swiveling back and forth in a high barstool with both hands wrapped around the steaming mug.

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><p><em>I simply must go<em>

_But baby, it's cold outside_

_The answer is no_

_But baby, it's cold outside_

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><p>If someone had told her a year ago that she'd be spending Christmas break alone pining after a murderous ghost in a creepy fucking house three thousand miles away from home, she'd have had them committed.<p>

But here she was, sipping cocoa in the kitchen instead of watching Christmas movies with her friends, and wondering when the last time Tate celebrated the holiday was. What would he have wanted this year? Pulp Fiction on VHS? A new pair of Chuck Taylors?

"God, you're pathetic," she sighs into her cup, pressing the warm ceramic against her cheek and peering out into the foyer.

Maybe a cigarette will help smother her recurring thoughts of mister black-eyed-and-infuriating. She hasn't seen the outside of the house yet, but can already guess that the roof is lined in lights and there's brown wicker reindeer on the lawn.

She drops out of her chair and, placing the mug atop the counter, plucks a soggy mallow from the cocoa to suck on.

The song's changed again, a melancholic rendition of 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Chrismtas' this time, and Violet decides then she doesn't mind the way it makes her heart feel a little too heavy.

She's feeling nostalgic when she slides across the linoleum in her socks, singing softly with the song and brushing her fingers over the tinsel that lines the doorframe leading from the kitchen to the entrance hall.

That's when she sees it, pinned to the wooden ceiling of the doorway, a tiny sprig of mistletoe that has her stomach flip-flopping in belated regret.

"Shit," she huffs out, wiping at her eyes because for some strange reason they're wet and she's sad and she can't stop looking at that mocking bundle of poisonous plant that's sneering down at her through two red berries.

"Mistletoe," Tate says from behind her, like Violet's looking at it because she can't figure out what it's called and not because it's making her feel like shit for telling him off when he was just trying to tell her he loved her.

"I know what it's called," she mumbles, trying to disguise the thickness in her voice with a cough that's unconvincing.

There's a moment of silence then, where the song breaks down into a slow instrumental and Violet just stares out into the empty foyer and pretends she can't feel Tate breathing against the back of her head.

"I'm sorry," Tate says, and she turns to face him, her heart jumping against the front of her ribcage.

"Stop saying that."

"But I am."

"I know."

He's wearing a red sweater patterned with white penguins and she can't help the sad smile that settles into her mouth. His hair is messy but not and she wants to reach up and flatten it out, but she doesn't, just stares up at him through wet eyes and toys with a tendril of her own hair, twisting and picking at the split ends.

"I love you."

"I know."

Then it seems like he's run out of things to say, and so has she, so he moves to fasten Violet's curtains of honey hair behind her ears and cup her cheeks, and she lets him, because it's Christmas and because she's missed him.

When he lowers his face to hers and nudges at the tip of her nose with his own, her small hands curl into the knit of his cheesy holiday sweater and she releases a shaking breath she didn't realize she'd been holding so long.

"I love you," he murmurs again, like it's a secret he's been wanting to tell her for years, but before she can shake her head and remind him she knows, he's slanting his mouth over hers and snuffing out whatever she's about to say because it's not an 'I love you' and anything else would ruin the moment. He tastes like peppermint and she tastes like chocolate and his lips are too soft and pliant against her own to warrant pulling back and scolding him for eating her candy cane.

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><p>They fall asleep entangled on the couch watching Bad Santa and swapping Christmas lists, willing to ignore the myriad reasons they shouldn't be together for just a little while, all in the spirit of Christmas.<p> 


End file.
